Friday, January 18, 2013

US Government Should Recognize the Republic of Somaliland

- We the Somaliland prodemocracy and human rights movements remind the US government
when British Somaliland became an
independent state on June 26, 1960, it was recognized by thirty-five states,
including the United States

Somaliland deserves recognition if the Obama
administration is truly sincere about promoting democracy in the wider Middle
East. In sharp contrast to southern Somalia where instability and crisis have
reigned and in fact intensified in the last twenty-one years, Somaliland has
established a democratic polity that, if recognized, would make it the envy of
democracy activists in the Muslim world.

The essence of Somaliland’s successful
democratization was captured by U.S.-based International Republican Institute
and the National Endowment for Democracy in convening a September 2006 panel
discussion on Somaliland. They wrote that;

“Somaliland’s embrace of democracy,
its persistence in holding round after round of elections, both winners and
losers abiding by the rules, the involvement of the grassroots, the positive
role of traditional authorities, the culture of negotiation and conflict
resolution, the temperance of ethnicity or clan affiliation and its deployment
for constructive purposes, the adaptation of modern technology, the conservative
use of limited resources, and the support of the diaspora and the professional
and intellectual classes are some of the more outstanding features of
Somaliland’s political culture that are often sorely lacking
elsewhere.”

Somaliland also deserves recognition from a purely
U.S.-centric national security perspective. The Somaliland government and
population embody a moderate voice in the Muslim world that rejects radical
interpretations of Islam. It would serve as a bulwark against the further
expansion of radical ideologies in the Horn of Africa by offering a shining
example (along with Mali and Senegal and other predominantly Muslim Sub-Saharan
African democracies) of how Islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive, but
rather mutually reinforcing.

Somaliland leaders are also eager to cooperate
with the US administration in a variety of counter-terrorism measures, including
working with AFRICOM and its arm called the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of
Africa (CJTF-HOA) based in Djibouti. They are currently prohibited from doing
so due to U.S. legislation that prevents cooperation with unrecognized
Somaliland authorities.

Recognizing Somaliland would contribute to
international security and stability by preserving the Republic of Somaliland’s
bulwark against piracy and terrorism without encouraging either ethnic
separatism or legitimization of al-Qaeda affiliates. On the other hand,
non-recognition threatens the modicum of international security that Somaliland
provides in the Horn of Africa. It does the international community no good to
allow rump Somalia’s lawlessness to spread.

Somaliland is a state that merely lacks recognition.
Recognition, however, is a political act and its validity turns on whether the
creation of the state to be recognized satisfied norms of international law.
Somaliland’s creation conforms to those norms: it satisfies the four Montevideo
Convention criteria of statehood; it gained its independence through
dissolution, a species of secession; and its secession conforms to the limiting
principle of uti possidetis, requiring territorial adherence to colonial
boundaries.